Research
For this project I just thought about what places I spent a lot of time at last year and really loved the atmosphere of. I ended up picking the overlook on mirror lake and a small area behind my dorm building. In the process of the former I went to the specific spot at mirror lake I liked the most and just started loosely and lightly sketching what I saw around me and especially the buildings in the distance. After being there for a bit I took a picture to have that captured went back home and finalized all the line work and fleshed out the greenery as well as the clouds and water. I used to study here all the time so it felt pretty natural to capture the atmosphere my drawing. I’ve always loved how the curves of the scene really flow through, and how you can still visualize the lines occluded by trees and shrubbery due to that flow. The invisible atmosphere is pretty captivating as well, the smell of the leaves and the sound of the fountain being the forefront of that. Using this information I captured what I feel at the spot in the drawing. It’s almost chaotic in a way as it’s a very busy scene but also very calming in the flow and solidarity of things. For the latter location, I really love how peaceful and quiet it feels, and almost shrouded in a way by the trees. I t has a very secluded but at the same time open atmosphere to it.
Production
To start working, I sketched each location 5 times to get a gist of the surroundings as well as to try and see what angle worked best. This felt pretty natural and I just drew a combination of what was in front of me as well as what I thought of the space in my head. I ended up picking spots I felt the most calm in, and that which had a larger overall field of view of the space.
I then started working on my full drawings,
flushing them out over time and using triangulation to capture where things were in the space. I worked my way up developing the buildings as a starting point and working my way to drawing the trees. Shading the leaves was the most challenging portion of this and I feel I’ve improved a lot with that specifically because of this project. I definitely think the mirror lake drawing came out a lot better than the other but they both have a place.
The drawings have a much different feeling than the images, and I think the drawn versions provoke what could almost be described as a sense of longing. The color of the photos helps a lot with providing a lot of feeling but the drawings give you only the space itself which I feel could draw a viewer in closer. Both drawing and photo have such unique properties it would be difficult to have one without the other to fully understand both the feeling of the space as well as the real space itself.
Final project: Campus Observation Drawings